(Closed) $6000 budget!!!

HI there, I’m hoping to have my wedding be under $6000!!! My ceremony and reception would be at my dads house – he has a beautiful heritage house with a massive backyard that can be decorated spectacularly. A friend can do my photography for under $1000 for two photographers for the entire day – and my friend’s parents can do our catering. My main concern is decor – tables, chairs etc…does anyone have any great ideas of how to set up a backyard for a reception? Preferably that wont cost too much! 🙂

My friend just had his wedding for under $8K. His major problem was renting tables and chairs so he borrowed from the local church he was apart of and that cut the rental fee down to $0 when he expected to spend about $600.

Granted, they were plastic, but his FI (now wife) found cheap linen to cover the tables with and still made everything look nice.

I’m mainly worried about the chair and table rentals. But we are not doing a plated dinner for my backyard wedding so we are not providing enough chairs for every body to sit in. It’s going to be more of a “cocktail” set up. That should cut some of the costs.

My wedding for 40 will be way under that and all of our details are gorgeous. I’m not doing anything DIY, renting a great and historical venue, flowers, cakes, photography for way less than $6000. I’m an amazing bargain hunter 🙂

@BabyBrain: getting married outside of the city vs in it saved a ton. Getting married on Sunday instead of Saturday cut the venue rental and the catering bill in half!!then instead of a dinner reception we are doing a lunch. That change knocked another 25% off!!

I have a friend that designed our invites and my FI is able to get us 50% off of printing them.

My dress was on sale because I kept waiting and hoping it would go down. I booked a photographer I know from modeliNg.

@BabyBrain: this is the color scheme or theme we are having. Instead of yellow we will have very pale blue accents. We will be using the exact flower pots, flowers, and table numbers from the top photo

Ask your local fire department for table and chair rental..they may have “___ FIRE DEPARTMENT” painted on the back and bottom of them, but it’s a place to sit and they’ll probably do it for cheap (: I’m having my wedding for WAY less than that..it’s difficult, but it’s doable!

Wow, that’s amazing. I don’t know if this might have anything to do with it (I just notice that way more people in America are able to have cheap weddings) But the cheapest wedding reception venue + catering package I have found is $6000. And that’s almost half of most most places – I know the cost of living in Australia is wickedly high, so maybe that is why I’m struggling so much with this. The photos above – for something like that, you’d be looking at about $10 000 or more. just for the venue and catering. No decorations or anything like that included.

@BabyBrain: I know it may not be quite “fine” enough for a wedding, but have you considered getting a few wood planks and tree stumps, covering them with linen and making tables out of them? It wouldn’t look very elegant but if you’re going for a rustic or “shabby chic” look maybe you could pull it off? That should cut your costs quite a bit. Instead of tree stumps, you could also use Ytong bricks, they’re super cheap. I have no idea about chairs though, sorry.

As for decorations: mason jars are quite fashionable now. You don’t even have to buy them. Your wedding isn’t until next year – that’s plenty of time to start washing and putting aside the jars after you’ve eaten your pickles or jam. Same goes for bottles. I don’t know about Australia but here, wine sometimes comes in such pretty bottles I wash them and turn them into vases for my flowers. For your wedding, you could tie some ribbon around them too.

@BabyBrain: Buying linen worked out a lot cheaper than renting it if you were thinking of doing that. I had a few websites that sold cheap linen uhhh cant remember them off the top of my head but let me know if youre interested in linens and ill look them up.

As for decorations, pom poms, which are super easy to make or fairy lights rent cheap. Both look great outdoors

@BabyBrain: Hey there. I live in Australia too and while i don’t have a budget per say i have definitely found some bargains.

I recommend checking out Kmart and Ikea. I found some vases at Kmart for $2 each. I also found some $2 glass water bottles too. I didn’t purchase them as they didn’t fit with my theme but i reckon they would suit a backyard do.

I did purchase my candle holders from Ikea for 79c each. Complete bargain as i needed 40 of them. (Pictured)

Hi Aussie here. excluding honeymoon I think we are approx 6-7G We found a venue that allowed outside catering and we are having spitroast catering with salads, roast veg bread,tea & coffee and dessert for 75 ppl and its costing $2400 oh and that includes silver service hot hor derves. $1500 on the bar simple outdoor on the river ceremony 500mtrs from venue $130 for some chairs and signing table. $800 for Photography. DIY table decor (candles from IKEA table rinners from ebay!! and few other bits. BM dresses $50 ebay, my dress silk,crystals $400 (stocktake sale off the rack) and shoes… well I work for a bridal shoe boutique so…cheap. I made my invites (bought pocket folds off ebay and printed up myself). Alot of it is searching and hunting and a bit of time. I’m planning to make my veil too!!

Best advice, keep it simple! (But it can be so hard to do that, you get caught up in it all and think you need all the tassles)